Outback carbon

Assessment of carbon storage, sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions in remote Australia

• Wild Australia

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Image: marj k / flickr

26 July 2010This report demonstrates that protecting and sequestering carbon in the Australian outback provides cheap options to help Australia make deep and early cuts to the nation's projected emissions.

The outback land management practices analysed in this report have the potential to provide early and achievable greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions:

• 9.79 billion tonnes of carbon is stored in the Australian outback, with an estimated additional 1.08 billion tonnes of carbon that can be stored there
• A total potential saving of approximately 1,300 Mt CO2-e1 can be achieved by 2050, with a 4% reduction in business-as-usual emissions by 2020, and a 5% reduction by 2030
• The economic cost of implementation is in most cases lower than that of many of the industrial sector emissions reductions that are targeted by the Australian Government‘s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) (most of these land management practices cost less than the estimated carbon price in the Australian emissions trading scheme or currently being discussed as interim pricing arrangements, apart from grazing management), with feral pest management identified as a 'no regrets' initiative.

Australia is in a unique position: our vast carbon stores in the outback provide an opportunity to utilise a readily available climate mitigation strategy. Australia is therefore well placed to develop a comprehensive and balanced policy framework for climate change that:

• Harnesses existing mitigation potential that does not rely upon huge technological advances, is able to be quickly implemented, and has, over millennia, proven itself an effective climate mitigation tool.
• Takes advantage of a cost effective method of carbon abatement
• Encompasses good risk management by ensuring that all facets of climate mitigation are equally addressed.

To capitalise on the opportunity for abatement present in the outback, Australia‘s Governments must establish the right policy setting to encourage uptake of the land management practices outlined in this report. The first key steps are:

• Arguing for a comprehensive international policy framework under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that fully recognises terrestrial carbon
• Clarifying and reforming where necessary domestic legislative and policy frameworks to allow landholders and local communities including Indigenous communities to share equitably and sustainably in the benefits of income streams which may derive from protection of existing outback carbon banks and further sequestration of terrestrial carbon
• Developing more robust monitoring and carbon accounting methods to properly measure the mitigation contribution of terrestrial carbon.
• Investing in further research and development to more thoroughly assess the environmental and economic benefits of changed land management practices

A report by The Nous Group to: Wild Australia, an initiative of The Pew Environment Group-Australia and The Nature Conservancy.

Image: marj k / flickr